The world wide web has exploded with new web sites. Today, most businesses want their product advertisements to reach the world market rather than the limited audience available before the Internet was invented. A web site does not succeed, regardless of how many potential customers visit the web site, if it does not retain the attention of those potential customers. Even more important than the initial attraction, however, is the ability for the web site to be constructed in a way that makes the customer want to stay and access more products, images, and items that the web site owner wishes the visitor to access during their visit. If the web site is not constructed in a manner to allow or entice the visitor to access the objects of interest, the visitor may quickly become impatient and move to an alternate source for the objects of interest. Thus, there exists a need in the art for a tool that will evaluate a visitor's activity on the web site and implement or offer solutions to modify the web site. Such modification suggestions should allow the web site to become more efficient and easier to use for visitors. This efficient and ease of use would likely entice the visitors to make their user session longer and purchase more products. Unlike a physical store that a customer may visit, which has the entrance and exit pre-designed, and that may somewhat control the visitor's actions, a web site may be exited at any time, and often is, if the web site visitor is frustrated at the complexity of navigating the objects of interest. Generally web pages within a web site are uncorrelated in that there is often no causal relationship between such pages, and thus, no manner to study visitor behavior.
Currently there are systems in the market that allow web site managers to review the utilization of their web sites and determine statistical information regarding such utilization. The available products that deliver such review ability, however, are limited to providing raw data regarding such utilization (e.g., the number of visitors per web page) or providing information on the actions that various visitors perform on a web site for review. While the current methods may allow a user to review particular sequences of activity, the current presentations of utilization information do not provide a user with information on the behaviors of the visitors or patterns that exist in the use of a web site.
Therefore, despite the efforts of the prior art, there is still a need for a method that allows web designers to view patterns in visitor behavior concerning web sites and visitor utilization of web sites wherein the web pages in such a web site are essentially uncorrelated to one another.